Dr. David Matlock and wife Veronica (Screen shot from http://youtu.be/6ijU6_L5W7M)

Well, the plastic surgery world just keeps getting creepier doesn’t it?

Although many of the new trendy surgeries, like dimpleplasty and toe shortening, and the societal pressures that lead people to get them are disconcerting enough, doctors like David Matlock continue to raise the icky-ness bar to a whole other level. Matlock had previously been known for pioneering postpartum vaginal reconstruction, along with appearing on the reality TV show “Dr. 90210.” Recently, however, Matlock returned to the headlines after revealing that he had used plastic surgery to turn a patient into the “perfect wife” for himself.

In 2007, a woman named Veronica entered Matlock’s office looking to undergo vaginoplasty, after giving birth to her first child. The doctor wasted no time in suggesting that in addition to the vaginoplasty, Veronica also purchase a package deal known as the “Wonder Woman Makeover,” which is an all-over liposuction procedure as well as a Brazilian “butt lift.” Shortly after her surgeries were completed, Matlock asked Veronica out and proposed to her on that same first date.

“She opted for everything I suggested,” Matlock told Barcroft Media. “Even marriage.”

Since their marriage, Veronica has undergone several additional surgeries, including the “G-Shot,” one of Matlock’s innovations, which heightens a woman’s sexual experience. Like his wife, Matlock is no stranger to plastic surgery procedures. The doctor has augmented his own muscles by injecting fat into them.

Although none of this is especially surprising in today’s world, it’s still unsettling. In many ways, Matlock is a modern day Victor Frankenstein. Obviously, Matlock isn’t reanimating a corpse as Mary Shelley’s deranged scientist did, but the similarities are hard to ignore. In each case, a man is using the latest scientific advancements to create a better and more beautiful person. If you’ll remember, Frankenstein didn’t set out to create a hideous monster but rather an aesthetically pleasing “human.” In a sense, Frankenstein was performing an incredibly extreme plastic surgery.

Similarly, there is a desire to control something that was previously out of any man’s control. Frankenstein sought to control life and death, a power no one had ever harnessed prior to his work. In Matlock’s case, he wanted to control the features that his future wife would have. If no woman possessed all the features that he thought the “perfect woman” should have, then he would create them for her (and, of course, for him). However, perhaps the creepiest aspect of it all is that he was not only in control over Veronica’s image, but also over Veronica the human being. Without his suggestions, she may never have undergone all the extensive surgery; remember, she only went in for vaginoplasty and it was Matlock who suggested the rest of the surgeries.

Of course, even though they share unnerving similarities, the two stories end much differently. Instead of creating something beautiful, Frankenstein creates a hideous monster, who murders many of those closest to Frankenstein. Where Frankenstein failed though, it seems Matlock has succeeded. By his own admission, he has sculpted the “perfect woman” to be his wife, an assessment that many in our society would agree with.

For me, however, there is something off-putting about the couple. Although I wouldn’t describe either of them as “ugly,” plastic surgery has given them both a cartoonish appearance. Matlock’s bulging muscles and six-pack abs look ridiculous on a man a year away from 50, while Veronica’s proportions resemble those of Jessica Rabbit. So even though they are by no means as hideous as Frankenstein’s monster (or even anywhere close), there is something grotesque about their appearance, which leaves them in this odd middle ground between a human and something inhuman.

And this for me is the consequence of excessive and repeated plastic surgeries. With each surgery, we lose the slight imperfections that make us us. For every mole removed, every dimple added, every butt lifted, we lose our most identifying features and move ever so closer to this humanoid image that society has placed in front of us as the ideal.

These days, plastic surgery isn’t regularly turning us into ghoulish figures, although it still does when surgeries are botched. Rather, it moves us further away from the flawed (but beautiful) human image and closer to the ideal Frankenstein originally tried to construct and the one our society has since constructed for us.

In many ways then, plastic surgery is bringing us closer to Frankenstein’s monster than we’d like to admit. And that’s a scary thing, indeed.

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Charlie Crespo (@Little_Utopia) is the editor-in-chief of Little Utopia.

Previously from Charlie Crespo:
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